A soft spot. Wasn't that such an understatement. Still, Aziraphale crooked his lips in a tired smile and nodded. "I suppose you could say that." Really, though, he had never articulated, or even tried to articulate, to another being the importance of Crowley's presence, the comfort in knowing that he was nearby or at least on the same physical plane. Crowley had, in an odd way, been a physical manifestation of hope, a snidely optimistic, occasionally tiresome, secretly kind creature that Aziraphale had never understood the way he thought he might understand a human, but without whom he was, he had to admit, drifting a bit.

Still. He'd heard of it happening, with humans, and from Gabriel's expression he had personal experience, so that was the story he would stick to for the moment.